Eurostat's Unit E1, responsible for the collection and validation of agricultural data, is both the innovator of eDAMIS Web Forms and the largest user of eDAMIS Web Forms. It developed eDAMIS Web Forms (formerly known as eCollect), in collaboration with Directorate B, in response to its specific data collection needs.
The Unit has a large number of datasets to manage, most of them tabular-based and relatively small in size, and it wants to incorporate a strong element of pre-validation into the data transmission process.
Standardization on the format for submission of data is essential for improving the efficiency of data collection and processing by Eurostat and for maintaining and improving data quality. SDMX-ML is being promoted as the standard by Eurostat and by several other major institutions (including Eurostat, the World Bank, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the UN).
Due to the size limitations of Web Forms, there are still some agriculture datasets for which it has not been possible to create Web Forms. This is the case for the Fishery datasets and part of the Economic Accounts for Agriculture datasets.
